


Soulmate Prompts

by liadan14



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Prompt fills from tumblr, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Warning: Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Chapter 1 - Harringrove: the one where once you meet your soulmate, it’s physically uncomfortable to be apart from them for too long.Chapter 2 - Harringrove: the one where you have a timer on your wrist that counts down to when you meet your soulmate.Chapter 3 - Will/Dustin: the one where soulmates can heal each other’s injuries.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Will Byers/Dustin Henderson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 142





	1. Harringrove: the one where once you meet your soulmate, it’s physically uncomfortable to be apart from them for too long.

Steve’s already had a headache for something like twelve decades when Dustin Henderson basically kidnaps him for his skills with a baseball bat. He’s not sure what, exactly, is wrong with him, he just knows that he’s barely been able to think through the fog of whatever-the-fuck ever since moments after basketball practice, after Nancy basically dumped him outside the gym. 

He buys her roses, because what else is he supposed to do?

It’s almost a relief when Henderson shows up, talking a mile a minute. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to say to Nancy. “Sorry you don’t love me” seemed like a bad way to start.

The headache lessens on the drive out towards the Henderson’s house, becomes a dull throb behind his right temple.

By the time they reach the junkyard, it’s brutal, pounding in his skull, making him short-tempered and fed up with the kids even though he, at their age, would have never had the temerity to face this kind of shit, let alone volunteer for it. Steve fights his way through it, leads the kids away from the junkyard and towards the lab, ignores the ever-increasing pounding in his head as best he can because he’s responsible for these shitheads now and that means something.

It’s only on the way back to Hawkins that it lessens enough for him to think.

It’s only when he’s stuck in the Byer’s house as a glorified babysitter once again that it settles back into a niggling awareness at the base of his skull.

It’s only when he punches Billy Hargrove in the face that it vanishes completely.

He’s too momentarily disoriented by the sudden absence of pain to fight back when Billy rails on him, the dissonance of the new pain blooming bright and hot on his face and the harsh goneness of the headache that’s been plaguing him all day too much to process.

When he wakes up in the back of Billy’s car, the headache is back, compounded by the throbbing in his face and the dizziness from what’s probably a concussion.

He deserves a damn award for getting the kids out of those tunnels alive.

Steve’s an idiot, but he’s not an idiot. 

When it’s over, when he’s gotten them all back to the Byers’, when they’re waiting on everyone else to come back, he reaches down gingerly and rests his hand on the top of Billy’s head. He can feel the tacky clumped-togetherness of hairspray, the warmth of Billy’s skin, and through the haze of everything that’s happened, no headache.

Billy wakes up, disoriented and groggy, when the kids are busy crowding Will in the hallway, making sure he’s okay. 

Billy groans when Steve takes his hand off his head, and sighs when he puts it back on.

“My dad is going to kill me,” he says, looking up at Steve’s mangled face through heavy eyes.

Steve’s dad is also going to kill him, but he gets the sense that Billy’s dad is going to kill him in a way that doesn’t involve revoking his driving privileges or something.

“Sorry I punched you,” he says.

“Sorry I nearly killed you,” Billy says.

“So, soulmates.” Steve tries to make it sound casual, like it’s not a huge deal.

Billy straightens himself up to sit on the floor, leaning heavily against Steve’s legs. He winces, presumably at the after-effects of whatever Max shot him full of. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry you got stuck with me.”

It doesn’t sound like he’s joking.

Steve’s not someone who’s good at words, and he doesn’t really know much about Billy beyond that he’s about a lightyear hotter than anyone else Steve’s ever met, that he can throw a punch and that he’s better at basketball than Steve. So instead of trying to formulate a misguided answer, he pulls Billy up by the armpits until he’s basically draped over Steve, until they’re hugging with their bodies close together, until the niggling feeling in his head isn’t just gone, it’s turned into a sort of soaring, joyful reverberation through his entire head.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says.

He takes it as a win when Billy doesn’t talk back.


	2. Harringrove - the one where you have a timer on your wrist that counts down to when you meet your soulmate.

Billy’s not exactly keen on Hawkins, Indiana. 

Timers don’t fuck up, is the thing, and he’s running out of options for the person at the other end of his to be anyone worth meeting.

He’s half convinced himself to drive up to Indianapolis in time for the timer to run down, just because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want his fuckin’ soulmate to be some hick from Hawkins. But Neil harps on him about responsibility that evening, and Billy just knows he’ll be in for it if he’s back late tonight, soulmate or no. 

Neil probably harps in on him about it because he knows the fucking timer’s running down, because he won’t let Billy have one damn good thing in his life, because Billy’s old enough to know soulmates are a crock of shit, because Neil’s sure was, she walked out on them both. 

So Billy goes to some lame-ass Halloween party at some chick named Tina’s house and pretends to be into it, pretends he’s not thinking about the flashing numbers on his wrist all night, tucked safely under the leather bracelet he never takes off anymore. He doesn’t dare check if the numbers have changed.

(They never change.)

He drinks enough - kegstand king - to forget what time it is exactly, to not have to know exactly when it’s going to happen - but he

well

he’s been putting off that one meeting, hasn’t he. 

King Steve, rumored in the halls of Hawkins High to be fallen from grace. King Steve with the only car in the lot that’s not a piece of shit or a pick-up. King Steve, in his perfect relationship with perfect Nancy Wheeler.

King Steve, who Billy had been purposely waiting to meet until - just - the - right - time. It snaps into focus for him, then, that he’d done that, that he’d ducked into the men’s room before Chemistry yesterday to avoid running into him too soon, that he’d waited an extra five minutes to get out of his car this morning so King Steve and his perfect hair had been out of sight before Billy had crossed the parking lot, that Billy had wanted it to be him.

Drunk, confused and reeling with it, he almost lumbers right into Steve, beer trickling down his bare torso, and as one, their timers tick to zero with a beep that’s unnoticeable in the noise of the party surrounding them. 

Billy doesn’t even really remember what he says, or hear what Steve says back to him, only catches on that Steve’s leaving, that he’s following Wheeler away from Billy.

Soulmates are a crock of shit.

Neil was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk the timer thing just always struck me as...well, in that case, you can control where you are and who you're with, right?


	3. Will/Dustin - the one where soulmates can heal each other’s injuries

The first time Will came home from school with his skinned knees totally healed, Joyce nearly had a panic attack. It could be anyone, she had to remind herself slowly, over a large glass of wine in the evening. Any one of the hundreds of kids in Hawkins Elementary, or someone in the middle school or high school who bumped into Will on the bus, or even someone who just happened to drive through Hawkins today and passed them a little too closely in the grocery store.

It didn’t have to mean Will would be locked into this terrible little town for the rest of his life like she was.

It didn’t mean he’d make the same mistakes she had.

He was only eight.

When Will was twelve, Joyce was so worried she didn’t notice until it was too late that the scarring that she was sure would be etched deep into his lungs from that -- thing -- that had been lodged so deep inside him she was sure it had all-but eaten him alive was gone hours after they got him to the hospital.

But who all had been near him since then? A hundred scientists? Armored guards? Nancy Wheeler? Hop? Steve Harrington? Any one of his friends and their parents who had been near him a hundred times before? It could be anyone.

Joyce put it from her mind and tried not to think about it. 

The years that followed were hard. 

Will was never hurt. He couldn’t be. It was like his soulmate’s protection was so strong it wouldn’t allow even the hint of a bruise to stay on his skin, not when he banged the back of his head when Jonathan closed a cupboard to fast in their rush to get to school, not when he got his finger trapped in a car door, and not when his teachers called Joyce in because only moments ago, he’d been unable to walk on a badly twisted ankle.

“I have a soulmate, don’t I,” Will asked her, matter-of-fact over pancakes for dinner, leg elevated for an injury that had ceased to exist only moments after it happened.

“You must,” Joyce told him. “Someone sure keeps fixing you up.”

Will stabbed at his pancake. “I wish they could fix my brain, too.”

“Your brain’s not broken, sweetie,” Joyce told him, earnestly but on auto-pilot, the only acceptable answer to give.

Neither of them mentioned trying to figure out who it was.

When Will was fifteen, the monsters stopped coming.

When Will was fifteen, he turned into a teenager, angry and self-righteous and trying so hard to outgrow the concern Joyce couldn’t help but shroud him in. He stayed out longer with his friends, and it became a source of comfort to her to know that if nothing else, he would come back with his skin intact.

She had narrowed down her list of suspects a lot since that first day, when Will was still small.

She tried not to think about it any further.

When Will was seventeen, Joyce walked into his room to ask if he and his friends were ready for breakfast after their last big sleepover of their last summer vacation before senior year of high school and saw Dustin Henderson running his pinky finger down a paper cut on the side of Will’s hand, taking it away with his touch.

His eyes widened when he saw her, and he scrambled to follow her to the kitchen. “You can’t ask him,” he said, earnest and sure. 

“You can,” Joyce pointed out. “How long have you been doing this?”

“I don’t...he doesn’t want that, with me,” Dustin said. “Believe me, I know.”

Joyce had no answer, because she didn’t actually know what Will did want.

When Will was eighteen, he and his soulmate got into a screaming match in the hosiery aisle of a Target.

“How could you not tell me?” Will yelled.

“I thought you knew.”

“How?”

“I broke my arm in Starcourt! And you fixed it! And you never mentioned it again!”

Will threw his hands up in despair. “Like forty million things happened that night, Dustin! How was I supposed to have known that was one of them?”

“I knew,” Dustin said. “I knew!”

”Well good for you!”

“Yeah!”

“So now what?” Will yelled, still too angry to think clearly.

When Dustin lunged forward to kiss him, his back hit the display of pantyhose hard enough to dislodge the entire color beige range. 

He didn’t feel a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> come follow me [on tumblr](https://bewires.tumblr.com/) and give me more prompts!


End file.
